


Escapism

by leagueofloneliness



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender, Zero Escape (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapping, Missing Persons, Multi, Mystery, Puzzles, Reunions, Team Bonding, Teamwork
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-09
Updated: 2018-03-09
Packaged: 2019-03-28 22:34:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13913559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leagueofloneliness/pseuds/leagueofloneliness
Summary: Kidnapped and trapped in a deadly game, Lance finds himself afraid for his life at every turn. Who can he trust when his own life is on the line?Keith, maybe.I have abandoned this project; I thought I would write more for it, but school has beaten me to death as I go into my senior year of college and I work 35 hours a week on top of school. It's just not happening, I'm sorry.





	Escapism

Lance was only sure of one thing; his head was absolutely killing him. He hadn’t drank last night, so it couldn’t be a hangover. Without opening his eyes, he flailed out his arm to reach for the glass of water he always kept on his nightstand, but his hand only met empty air. Confused, Lance reached out even lower, but didn’t even feel his nightstand next to his bed where it ought to be.

 

Furrowing his brow, Lance thought perhaps he had rolled over in his sleep farther than normal, so he rolled to his right to get closer to the edge of his bed, but instead of stopping, Lance found he was falling right off where he was laying, and he was falling way too far for how tall his bed was off of the ground.

 

“Whoa!” Lance cried out as he hit hard ground underneath him, a metal clang ringing out and making its way up to his ears. Lance’s eyes shot open, and for the first time since he had woken up, Lance realized he wasn’t even in his room. Taking a quick assessment of his surroundings, Lance saw that he had fallen out of a metal set of bunk beds, not his own bed. The mattress looked as thin as cardboard and only a few feet wide, so it was a wonder he didn’t immediately notice the difference from his queen-sized bed at his apartment.

 

“Where am I?” Lance wondered.

 

Not only was the floor he was sitting upon metal, but the walls in the room were too. In the room, there was another set of bunkbeds, a small sink next to a small folding table, and a linen closet next to what looked to be an old-timey space heater.

 

The only door to the room had a number 5 painted onto it in red paint, but no matter how hard he tried, Lance couldn’t pry the darned thing open.

 

“Whoa, what the heck is going on here? Is this some kind of prank show?” Lance started pounding on the door in the hopes someone would answer it, but he somehow knew no one was on the other side. “Hello! Open up! This isn’t funny anymore!”

 

There was no response. Lance was getting frustrated, and he needed to calm down so he could think about what was going on.

 

“Okay, Lance. Let’s reassess the situation. You don’t know where you are, you woke up on a shit ass mattress, you’re alone, and you’re locked in this room. You’re in as bad of a situation as you can get. So think about how to get out of here, ‘cause it can only go up from here, right?” Lance brought his hand up to scratch at his head, and that was when he noticed it.

 

On his left wrist was a watch; maybe not exactly a watch, upon further inspection, unless it was a very bad one because it only displayed one number on the screen: 5, just like the number painted on the door to his room.

 

“What the – ?” Lance looked at his wrist in bewilderment. When the hell had he put this on? _Had_ he put it on, or had someone else done it to him? All of the questions in his head would never get an answer as long as he stayed in this room.

 

“I have to get out of here! Step one, search the room.” Lance looked around the space for anything he missed upon his initial waking and found that on the bunkbeds opposite the ones he fell out of was a blue briefcase. It was locked, but there was a keyhole, so he probably needed something else to open it, and it had to be in the room with him. Over by the sink on a shelf, Lance found a framed picture of what looked like the Titanic for some reason, but that didn’t seem _too_ odd to Lance, so he ignored it for the time being.

 

Above the shelf was a mirror, giving Lance the chance to see himself, and _man_ did he look rough. Sleeping on a mattress like the ones on the bunkbed really had not given him his beauty sleep that Lance coveted so dearly.

 

“Wait a second … This feels … familiar…” He said.

 

 Suddenly Lance felt like he was catapulted into the past; he remembered something from before waking up in this room. He had just gotten home from work on what he hoped was last night, and he had come home to an empty apartment, like usual. He set his bag down in the living room and went to his bedroom, but he noticed when he entered the room that it was way colder in his room than the rest of the house. Across from the door, the window in his bedroom was open and his curtains were fluttering slightly with the breeze that was entering his room from outside.

 

“Did I leave that open? Huh, weird.” Lance had moved to shut the window when he heard a weird _hiss_ coming from behind him, like the sound of someone spraying a can of hairspray or something.

 

Lance looked up and saw something reflected in the glass of the window; behind him was a person wearing a gas mask. Lance whirled around to face the person, but a noxious white gas reached his nostrils and his whole world tilted as he slid towards the ground. He was out before he even hit the floor.

 

What snapped him out of his reverie was a sudden cracking noise to his right, almost like the sound of a bonfire, but Lance knew that couldn’t be what it was. He looked over and saw that the glass on the only window in the room, a porthole or something like one, had begun to fracture slightly.

 

“Whoa, hey now window, you better not be doing what I think you’re doing.” Lance wagged a finger at the porthole, but it clearly had no cares that he was chastising it because all of sudden, the glass gave way and water started gushing like a geyser into the room, spreading over the floor and pooling at his feet around his shoes.

 

“Holy hell!” Lance shouted and rushed to the hole, trying to plug it with his hands to no avail. “Fuck!” Lance had to get out right now if he didn’t want to drown.

 

He rushed over to the door and tried pulling it open again, but it didn’t work. “Ugh!” Lance pulled at his hair in frustration, terrified that he was going to die in this room without even knowing why he was in it to begin with. Next to the door there was what looked like an electronic key-card swiping machine, and Lance quickly deduced that would have to be his way out of the room. Maybe the key was in the blue briefcase he saw on the bunkbed!

 

Lance started frantically tearing the room apart, checking by the sink again, then the linen closet. Inside the linen closet was a small safe with a fourdigit pin as the only means of unlocking it.

 

“How the hell am I supposed to know how to open this? I must have missed something.”

 

Going over to the bunkbeds he fell out of, Lance tore apart the sheets and pillows until he found a small scrap of paper with four differently oriented triangles on it.  


“What does this mean! Ugh! This doesn’t help me at all!” Lance shouted again, and he sort of felt like he was going crazy with how much he was talking to himself. The water was up to his knees now, but he wasn’t any closer to getting out of the room.

 

Going back to the sink, Lance looked at the picture frame again. Maybe there was a clue in it; it had to be in the room for a reason? The back of the frame seemed a little loose, so Lance yanked it off and found that on the back of the picture in the frame was a “decoder” for triangle symbols, all in different angles and corresponding to different numbers.

 

“Finally! Fucking finally, now I can get into the safe in that closet!” Lance sloshed through the water that was now up to his mid-thighs, but he opened up the safe to find a small blue key. “This has gotta be it!”

 

He moved quickly to the bunkbed, picked up the briefcase and shoved the key into the slot. The key turned to the right and made a satisfying click, and Lance almost jumped in the air with excitement.  
  
“Yes! Let’s see what’s inside of you!” Lance pried the briefcase lid open and found a stack of cards inside of a thin red notebook that had hundreds of words on each page, none of which Lance had any time to read if he wanted to get out of this room without drowning. He grabbed everything from the case and slid out the cards, looking at each one to figure out which one could be the key to the door. There were 6 altogether, half red and half blue, and each had a different number printed on the front.

 

He moved to the door and started frantically swiping cards in the slot, but the damned thing kept making noises that definitely made it sound like he was doing something wrong.  


“Argh, what the fuck! Open up!” The water was up to his waist now and Lance was starting to get very cold. He’d need to read that stupid journal and figure out what he was supposed to do with these cards, or he’d die in here. Skimming the text as best as he could, Lance gathered that he was supposed to somehow make the numbers of the cards he swiped add up to five in some stupid way, and not one he really understood. The water was up to his chest now, and god, was Lance bad at math.

 

“Fuck this! I’ll just keep swiping until I get somewhere!” Lance started furiously scanning cards through the system, but it just kept beeping at him negatively. The water was almost up to the card reader, and Lance was sort of worried it would short circuit from all the water and stop working, but the water reached it soon enough and that didn’t happen, so Lance decided he’d thank whatever god had saved him after he got out of this mess because he sure as hell didn’t have time to do it now.

 

“Goddammit, work!” The water was up to his neck when somehow, suddenly, the key reader beeped pleasantly and the door next to him clicked like it had unlocked. “Fuck yeah!”

 

 

Lance grasped the handle and pulled at the door with all his might, but surprisingly it opened quite easily. Unfortunately, though Lance was able to leave the room, so was all the water, and he found himself riding what seemed to be a massive wave down a thin corridor lined with doors until the momentum of the water slowed as it filled the larger space that now surrounded him.

 

Looking around him now, Lance seemed to be at the bottom of a very ornate staircase. The space around him was starting to fill up with water just like the room he had been trapped in was, and Lance really wanted to get dry, so he moved towards the stairs and ran up them as fast as he could. He didn’t stop running, even as he passed other floors because he wanted to get as far away from the water as possible. If he could get to the top, maybe he could get to the roof or something and be free from the threat of drowning, which was really appealing.

 

He would have been extremely committed to his plan and finished it had he not run into a literal horde of other people that rounded the stairs at the same time he was switching landings in between floors.

 

“Oof! Whoa, hey!” Lance was knocked to the floor of the landing, right on his ass, which was already feeling sore from his fall earlier from the bunkbed. “What’s going on here? We’ve gotta go, there’s water filling up this building down there!”

 

The horde of people was more like a group of seven, but all at once they started talking at him, and Lance couldn’t really tell what was going on.

 

“Hey! I can’t tell what you want if you all speak at the same time. You!” He pointed at a woman with white hair, elegant features, and if he was being honest, a rather odd outfit. “Tell me what’s going on?”

 

The woman took a deep breath before launching into her explanation. “We’re just as confused as you are! I woke up in a room with a set of bunkbeds, just as everyone else did. None of us know how we arrived in this building, but we all had something similar happen when we woke up; my room flooded as well, and when I escaped I saw everyone else standing around looking confused, so we swapped stories. We were trying to find a way out, but it seems like all the doors except the ones we came out of are locked. You said the building is still flooding? My room stopped flooding as soon as I got my door open; everyone else’s did too. Perhaps yours did not because it was the last?” The woman asked.

 

Lance shrugged and said, “That doesn’t matter, we need to get out of here! What if we drown?”

 

A man standing behind the woman with the white hair shook his head. “Didn’t you hear Allura? She just said all the other doors are locked. We can’t get out of here by going up!”

 

“Oh yeah, moustache? Did you check every door? I bet you didn’t!” Lance shouted.

 

“Hey, no need to yell at him. We’re all in this together, okay?” Another man stepped forward, a streak of white through his otherwise jet-black hair making him stand out immediately in Lance’s mind. Who had hair like that? Did he dye it? No, it didn’t matter. They needed to get out! He could ask the hot guy if the carpet matched the curtains later. “Anyway, Allura is right. All the doors are locked. We have no exit as of right now, but yelling won’t fix that. Calm down. We can move to the top floor for the time being, but we need to come up with a plan together.”

 

“Actually, that may not be necessary. If the building were filling up with water, wouldn’t we be able to hear it?” A younger man with sandy hair spoke now, and everything about him just seemed intelligent. He wasn’t wearing glasses, but next to him seemed to be a smaller clone of himself that was wearing a pair, and Lance was sort of freaked out. Did he just find a pair of clones after being kidnapped or something? “Listen; there isn’t any water sounds, at least none that I can hear. I don’t think we need to be worried about drowning.” Now that he mentioned it, Lance didn’t hear any water, and he sort of felt stupid for even being worried.

 

The white-streak hottie was speaking again. “On third floor we went past, I saw some benches. Let’s move there and regroup, okay? We all could use a break, I’m sure we’re stressed right now. We’ll think better after we rest.” Everyone nodded in agreement, and Lance was kind of glad that someone was taking charge because he felt a little too shaken up to do anything else but follow at the moment. They all moved to follow the man down the flight of stairs.

 

“Wait!” A voice called out from behind him, which didn’t make sense because Lance had been the last to start following everyone down the steps. He was pretty sure there wasn’t anyone else. He whipped around to look back behind him and almost fell on his ass for the third time that day.

 

“K-Keith?” Lance shouted.

 

“Lance?”

 

Suddenly everyone was clambering around him; “You know him?” “What’s going on?” “What the hell?”

 

Lance rushed up the stairs to meet Keith, who was running down the stairs to meet Lance. They met halfway and Lance was tempted to wrap his arms around the other man because he was the first familiar thing Lance had seen in what felt like ages, but he refrained himself because he hadn’t seen Keith in _years_ and it would probably be weird to do, given the situation.

 

“Keith, what are you doing here?” Lance asked, looking up at the man on the step above him. He hadn’t changed much since middle school; sure, he had on some pretentious jacket that was bright red, but his hair was still a mullet, and his face was longer, but it was still definitely him. Thinking about it, he had looked like a wreck earlier when he saw himself in that mirror, but here Keith was, beautiful. Life really wasn’t fair. Leave it to Keith to get kidnapped and still be hot.

 

“I have no idea, Lance, but holy fuck is it good to see a familiar face. Everything has been so goddamn messed up since I woke up, I have no idea what’s going on.” Keith reached out a hand to Lance’s shoulder as if to ground him to something he knew, something he could trust.

 

“Hate to break up this reunion, but could you explain what the hell’s going on? How do you two know each other?” The man wearing an orange headband from the group was shouting at them now.

 

Lance glanced back at Keith, then sighed as he walked down the stairs to the rest of the group. “I know Keith from middle school. We went to the same place, played on the same sports team and all that crap. We were friends, but we were really competitive with each other, so we kinda fought a lot. It was good though. I haven’t seen him since middle school though, I have no idea why we’re here together.”

 

The man with the white streaked hair spoke again. “We can introduce ourselves when we all sit down. Could you all follow me?”

 

He gestured down the stairs, and the group collectively shrugged and followed.

 

When they got to the seats on the third floor, they moved some of the chairs into a semi-circle and took a seat. Lance sort of wanted to sit by Keith, but the man in the orange headband sat by him before he got a chance and he didn’t really feel like being a bother for the time being, so he let it slide and took the seat that was left open.

 

The man with the white streak was still standing, but he began to speak and went over the basic facts of their situation. “We all woke up in rooms in this building. None of us know how we got here, right? Looking at you now, we all have the same bracelets on our wrists. Does anyone know what they’re for?” He paused in his speech to give anyone a chance to speak up, but no one did, so he continued. “Great. We’re going to stay positive here though. My name is Shiro. I’m 28, and all I remember from before I woke up is some weird gas and a guy in a mask. Does anyone else remember something similar?” Everyone’s hands shot up in agreement. “Okay, so at least that’s consistent too. That makes me feel better.”

 

“Why would that make you feel any better?” The clone that looked like they could be a child had asked that and pushed up their glasses at the same time.

 

“Well, that means it was planned. Someone brought us specifically all together here. That means we’re connected, right? Why all of us? Why knock us out? Did the person not want us to know where we’d be going? That leads me to believe that we were taken for a specific reason, I think. Not that we know what the reason is, but it’s a start. I think we should all introduce ourselves. It could help make us feel less uneasy about the situation. Let’s start with you.” Shiro pointed to the person sitting on the left edge of the semi-circle.

 

“Me? Okay, well, my name is Coran. I woke up just like you said, in a room with no idea how I got here. I’m 42, and I work in public relations. No reason for anyone to target me, right?” Coran stroked his orange moustache and nodded as he said this.

 

“Okay, great. Thanks, Coran. Next?”

 

The woman with white hair from before stood up next, hair wafting around her shoulders. _Man, she is pretty,_ Lance thought.

 

“My name is Allura. I am 31, and I work in computer science with a specialty in software design. I too experienced the white gas and the person with a mask.” She sat back down and smoothed her weird dress out around her.

 

“Thank you. Next?” Shiro said.

 

“I’m Matt. I’m 27, and I’m a civil engineer. Same thing happened to me. Pidge, you’re up next.”

 

The clone that was probably a child stood up next and said confidently, “My name is Pidge. I’m 17, and I’m a junior at UCLA. Matt is my brother, so that’s probably why we’re here together.”

 

Shiro frowned, but didn’t comment on the last bit of what Pidge had said.

 

Keith was next, and his introduction was short. “You already know my name and how I woke up. I’m 22.” And then he sat back down, leaving Shiro frowning again.

 

“Thanks, Keith. I know things seem hard right now, but we’re all going to get through this together. I hope you’ll feel more comfortable sharing with us as we work this out. Great, next?”

 

The man next to Keith stood up. “My name is Hunk, I’m 26. I’m currently in graduate school right now. I woke up in a tiny bunkbed and I’m pretty bummed about that. Don’t really know what’s going on, but I hope we can work it out!”

 

Lance was up. “I’m Lance, 21 right now, and I work as a barista right now while I’m finishing up my undergraduate degree.”

 

Shiro smiled at that, then nodded to the last man in the group.

 

The man nodded and stood up curtly, hands pressed against the small of his back rather elegantly, as if he were making a formal speech. He had long white hair like Allura had, and Lance wondered if maybe they were related like Matt and Pidge were. Except, they didn’t sit together, so that probably wasn’t likely.

 

“I am Lotor. I would rather not disclose what I do as a profession, but I am 29 years old. I did not see a person in a mask, but I do remember being drugged in the manner you all were.”

 

Shiro nodded and clapped his hands together. “Great! Thank you everyone for sharing. Now that we know some names for these new faces, let’s - ”

 

He was cut short by a sudden crackling heard over head, almost like a PA system from a high school. Everyone looked up suddenly to try and find the source of the noise and Pidge pointed out a speaker in the corner of the floor they were currently on. A voice boomed over the speaker, chilling Lance to the bone.

 

“Welcome aboard. I welcome you all, from the bottom of my heart, aboard this, my vessel. I am Zero, the captain of this ship. You have all been selected to volunteer for my very special game, and I’m so glad you could join me.”

 

Everyone started to speak at that but Shiro silenced them with a press of his finger to his lips. “You will be playing a game. Some of you, I know, are familiar with this game. The Nonary Game. It is a game where you will put your life on the line. On April 14th, 1912, the famous ocean liner, known as the Titanic crashed into an iceberg. After remaining afloat for two hours and forty minutes, it sank between the waters of the North Atlantic. I will give you more time. Nine Hours. That is the time you will be given to make your escape. On this ship, there are nine people; you have already introduced yourselves, I’m sure. There are nine doors for the nine of you to go through in nine hours. Plenty of time, of course.”

 

Everyone scoffed at this remark, but of course the voice continued. “You will find doors marked with certain numbers, one through nine. The bracelets on your wrists also have numbers one through nine on them. The numbers on your bracelet must add up to the numbers marked on the door in what is called a “digital root”, as I so graciously explain in the notes I left you in your rooms. A minimum of three people must pass through a door at a time, and no more than five. If you try to enter a door and your number does not make the digital root of the number marked on the door, you will be penalized. This rule is non-negotiable.”

 

“Penalized? What does that mean?” Hunk asked.

 

“To enter the door, you must verify your bracelet number on the scanner to the left of each door. Once you enter the door, it will close behind you after 9 seconds. You will then have 81 seconds to verify your bracelet, or you will be penalized. The purpose of this game is very simple; leave this ship alive. Though hidden, an exit can be found. Find the door marked with the number nine. Open it, and you can leave. Seek an exit. Seek the door that carries a nine.”

 

The voice cut off and the crackling of the intercom ended. All chaos broke loose around Lance, and he almost felt the need to cover his ears it was so loud.  
  
“What does he mean, penalized? Are we going to die? He said our lives were on the line!”

 

“Leave the ship alive? Does that mean we can die?”

 

“Who would do this? Zero, you bastard! Show yourself!”

 

Everyone was upset, and Lance understood, but they needed to just shut up. Shouting would get them nowhere; they only had nine hours, and he didn’t want to die on this ship.

 

“EVERYONE!” He bellowed. “SHUT UP!” Everyone ceased talking almost immediately, but they all looked a bit annoyed. Keith, at least, looked impressed.

 

“Thank you, Lance.” Shiro said. “If what he just said was true, then yes, our lives are on the line. We need to get out of here, and the only way to do that is to go through the number nine door. None of us want to die, I’m sure, so we need to work together and figure out how to get out of here. Does everyone find that agreeable?”

 

Nodding again, everyone stood as if to follow Shiro. “I saw some doors with numbers earlier, as I’m sure you all did too while we were looking around. Well, everyone but you Lance. We’ll show you, they’re on the floor above us. We can check out the flooding you mentioned too, since we don’t hear it right now, as Matt mentioned. If what Zero said is true, he’s somehow able to control the ship’s sinking. He could have turned off the water for now somehow, but it would be good to check just to make sure.” With that, Shiro turned around and walked towards the staircase. Everyone followed, naturally.

 

There were two numbered doors that Shiro led them to, one marked five and the other four. Just as Zero mentioned, there were scan pads next to the doors. Lance wanted to try one just to make sure it worked, so he walked up to the number five door and placed his hand on what looked like the sensor. The machine beeped at him, but the door didn’t open, even though he was number five. Looked like they would need at least three people after all.

 

“Shiro, what number are you?” Lance asked.

  
“I’m number three. Good point, Lance. Everyone, please show each other your bracelets so we know what numbers we’re dealing with for the doors.” Shiro said.

 

The left arms of everyone shot out into a circle; Lotor was 1, Matt was 2, Shiro was 3, Pidge was 4, Lance was 5, Keith was 6, Hunk was 7, Allura was 8, and Coran was 9. No one had a number in the double digits, and Lance remarked as much to the group.

 

“That makes sense. In the note left by Zero in my original room stated that when creating a digital root, any numbers that add up to a double digit, you would add together. For example, if you add my number to Lance and Coran’s, you would get 22. Add 2 to 2 and the digital root would be 4, which means we would hypothetically be able to open door four here.” Allura stated very calmly, and Lance was incredibly impressed. All the math in that note had gone right over his head.

 

“Hey, if you do that we can’t all go through the doors! Three people is the minimum and five is the maximum, that would leave one of us behind!” Hunk said.

 

Allura sighed before answering. “No, this was just an example. I was not suggesting we ought to use that combination, I just wanted to make sure we all understood the concept.”

 

“Oh. Well. Just wanted to make sure!” Hunk said, turning away to avoid eye contact out of embarrassment.

 

“Well, then we need to make a decision, don’t we? Who will go through what door?” Keith asked.

 

“If we all want to go through the doors, the best option would be to split the group into five and four people.” Pidge broke through to the center and launched into a lengthy explanation of the options. “We don’t want to leave everyone behind, so we have to have four and five people in two groups. Coran, your bracelet doesn’t affect the digital root discussed in the note left by Zero; for example, if you add the first four numbers, 1,2,3, and 4, you get 10, which makes the digital root 1. If you added 9 to that, you would get 10 again, and then have a root of 1. We can use this to our advantage. I propose we split the groups as follows; Lance, Keith, Shiro, and Allura can go through door four together while I, Matt, Hunk, and Lotor will go through door five. Coran, you can choose either option and it won’t be an issue.”

 

“Is that the only option?” Lotor asked.

 

“Well, no, but I would prefer to stay with my brother. If we choose the other option, we would be separated. I’m scared of that.” Pidge responded.

 

“Pidge…” Shiro said softly. “We can vote on this, but I agree with Pidge. This is the best option for the time being. Everyone in favor, raise your hand please.”  


Lance lifted his hand and looked over to see that Keith had done the same, which was kind of cool because that meant they would be together in the next room. Everyone but Lotor had raised their hands, but since the majority had agreed, they went with Pidge’s plan. Lotor rolled his eyes and muttered something under his breath, but Lance ignored him and moved towards door four with Keith, Shiro, and Allura.

 

“Coran, would you want to come with us?” Allura asked, noticing the man was standing in between the two doors with a conflicted expression on his face.

 

“Ah, yes! That would be just great, thank you for asking! Right, so we just put our hands on this right here?” Coran asked, placing his hand upon the scanning device.

 

“Everyone else, scan your bracelet too.” Shiro said.

 

Lance, Allura, and Keith each scanned their bracelets, and once Shiro placed his hand on the sensor it dinged and the door began to lift. They rushed into the room that was on the other side, and Lance noted that a sudden beeping started emitting from the bracelet at his wrist. Zero had said they would have 81 seconds to scan their bracelets at a second device, and they needed to find it quick if they didn’t want to be penalized. The five of them rushed down the hallway of the room, searching for the device that would stop whatever penalty was coming their way. If they didn’t find it… Lance didn’t want to think about that.

 

At the end of the hallway, he finally saw it. “Look! I think that’s it! Run!” The five of them bolted down the hallway towards what Lance saw on the other end. “How much time do we have left?”

 

“I don’t know, just run!”

 

They reached the end of the hallway and slammed their hands onto the scanner. Once all five of them had verified their numbers, the beeping stopped and they let out a sigh of relief.

 

“Holy hell, I haven’t ran that fast since middle school!” Lance exclaimed.

 

Keith laughed as he tried to catch his breath, hands resting on his knees as he doubled over in an effort to slow his breathing. “Now that we did that, let’s seek a way out of this room, yeah?” They all turned away from the panel back towards the hallway filled with doors and realized their mission might take longer than they realized.

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, everyone. I have somewhat risen from the dead; I do not have any current plans to keep working on my other fic, but I have this right now for you all. 
> 
> Any constructive criticism is appreciated! I'll be writing the next chapter this week, so comments are appreciated.
> 
> This AU is based on 999, the first game in the Nonary Game series. The plot will differ from the game somewhat.


End file.
